I think most of you know the problem. You're visiting Facebook and suddenly you see an image that comes to you known. Correct, it is your image! Uploaded by one of these x 100 pages without references to you and without a request for copyright. It's downloaded on your private page or here on AF.com. And the most of them are cutting away the copyright.

In the last time i saw a lot of images of mine on this pages and much more pics of yours. When I write an email to this sites, they don't answer me. And when you are reporting a copyright violation to FB, they only delete one, two pictures and not more. And on the next day the upload goes on on this sites.

for me these are thieves without respect for our work. But it's hard to put a stop. That's the reason for my question to you: What are you doing against this problem?

Well Ludwig, this isn't a new Problem.
I had this problem for the first time about 4 years ago with Hornet-pictures from Axalp.
After I had several cases about stolen Pictures and still have...

The thing you are describing is only the prove, that many People out there have absolutely no respect for others work / for other peolpe!
I know what I'm talking about...
People think, the only can take pictures, texts, etc. for free in the internet.
If you read my signature, you know what I mean: "I wish back the good old times, when a picture was a picture and not only bits and bytes and when the people knew the meaning of the word respect. Respect is a very rare thing in our days…"

Even if some pictures get stolen via Airfighters (and even that I'm not allways agree with Ray), I still think Airfighters is a very good platform for us to show the work from our hobby to all the friendly people out there...

Put visible watermarks in the middle of your pictures and you will have less Problems with stolen pictures!

Martin

I wish back the good old times, when a picture was a picture and not only bits and bytes and when the people knew the meaning of the word respect. Respect is a very rare thing in our days…

In these cases I do write a PM to the person en request him directly to respect the copyright of the photographer and removing the picture or adding a credit. Mostly the pictures are removed afterwards.

I do not agree with Martin one should ruin the picture by putting a watermark in the middle of the picture. A slight watermark on top or bottom often does the trick without influencing the image itself. But even that I do not, as I simply don't like watermarks. The lending of my pictures is a consequence I that must accept.

A few weeks ago I put in a script to disable the right-click function to prevent people from saving the photos "easily". I also prevented people from being able to save on mobile devices as well. To my surprise, the next day I had about a dozen people sending me complaints about why they couldn't save the photos anymore. So, I removed the script. But, I can bring it back if you guys feel it is worthwhile.

However, keep in mind that there are still several other ways to get a photo, if one is really intent on having it. For example, they can easily do a screenshot and then crop the photo from the screenshot. And there are other ways as well. So, it does make it a little harder to save the photos, but it won't 100% prevent someone from getting the image if they really wanted to.

Facebook is not the only place where stolen photos show up, I recently set up an Instagram account and was surprised to see how many photos were lifted from here and uploaded there, many times with the copyright bar cut off, but the watermark still present sometimes. I confronted one low-life with the account name of "full_afterburner". After a few comments back and forth requesting him to at least give credit to the website and photographer, he simply blocked me. Like him, there are probably dozens more. What can we do?